Overall we were impressed with the New York Times obituary of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, zt’’l, authored by now-retired veteran Times reporter on all things Jewish, Joseph Berger. Non-Jewish readers of The Times doubtless came away with the sense that someone truly great and consequential had passed.
Yet there was a disconcerting dimension to the obituary as well, because for all the extolling and paeans to other-worldliness, Mr. Berger and The Times editors seemingly believed they had license to tinker with the image of the great sage at their will. In the midst of all the accolades and testaments to his greatness and references to him as “Rabbi Kanievsky,” we also found these references to Rav Chaim, zt”l: “Chaim Kanievsky was born on Jan. 8, 1928, in Pinsk…”; “Chaim was regarded as a prodigy as a child…”; and “Chaim’s father was appointed head of a yeshiva for older teenage boys while Chaim studied at the Lomza Yeshiva…”
To be sure, they would argue that they were only making reference to Rav Chaim when he was a child, but the disrespect of it is as plain as it is out of place. L’havdil, they would never dream of describing a pope by his given first name alone.
But so it goes.
